The paralysis of betrayal Май 27, 2011

Last October, I discovered that my boyfriend had been cheating on me with another woman. Our story is complicated. We were married young, had a daughter and then were separated for eighteen years. So, after we were reunited, I thought that we both were committed for the rest of our lives, having gone through so much pain during the years we were apart.

The details are unimportant. If you are interested, then you can read through the rest of this blog for the juicy details. Start way back in October and you can read me flailing about trying to not fall down the deep hole of betrayal.

Betrayal has made me feel like shit. Betrayal has made me feel discarded. Betrayal, his betrayal, has made me feel like yesterday’s lunch. The experience of betrayal has made me distrustful of the universe. It has made me feel unwanted and useless. I have felt deceived, tricked and made a fool of. He cuckolded me. I have spent the past seven months cataloguing the emotions I have experienced through circling through the extended grief cycle of shock, denial, bargaining, anger and acceptance.

It was the worst long winter of my life. That was my thought, when it first happened, was trepidation about this shock, this trauma right before the onset of a northern New England winter. No, it can’t be. But it was. And it was, and it was, and it was.

I feel now like I’ve been in a train wreck and I’m trying to get up. I’m trying to stand. My legs are wobbly. I am weak. It is the loss of youth, of health, of strength. I am not the same person. This shock, this trauma, this betrayal has paralyzed me. Not just emotionally but physically. It is as if I have stopped and now I have to get up and start moving again. It was the asthma which came from the trauma which stopped me. I pretty much collapsed. I’m not sure how I got through the winter, or how I went to work every day. How did I buy the food? Feed the kids? Pay the bills? In between it all, I just went to bed and curled up in the fetal position and coughed and coughed and coughed.

I was paralyzed but I am trying to get up. I am so mad about what he’s done to me. Why couldn’t he have stayed away, after eighteen years? Why didn’t he just leave me alone?

But I know the answer now, which I did not know last fall. It is simply this; he is still selfish and irresponsible. These have become his main character traits.